


A profitable diversion

by my_deer_friend



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Fluff, Historical, Laflams, Lams - Freeform, Multi, Treasure Hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24821275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/my_deer_friend/pseuds/my_deer_friend
Summary: John had been on the pirate ship for half a year now, and he was *bored*.---A bit of silliness that lives in the world of That_Would_Be_Enough's Pirate AU.
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette, Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens, Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens/Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette, John Laurens/Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	A profitable diversion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThatWouldBee_Enough](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWouldBee_Enough/gifts).
  * Inspired by [When the Wind Blows We're Together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12981138) by [ThatWouldBee_Enough](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWouldBee_Enough/pseuds/ThatWouldBee_Enough). 



John had been on the pirate ship for half a year now, and he was _bored_. 

When he’d first joined up, his time and energy had been fully engaged in winning the crew’s trust. From the very first day, he tried to show that he wasn’t going to harm or betray them, and he willingly submitted to their pointed questions and skeptical looks. He also threw himself into the manual labour that operating a ship entailed - scrubbing decks, moving cargo, winding rope, hoisting sails, cooking, cleaning, hauling water, laundering clothes. If anything, John suspected it was this willingness to do the meanest tasks on board that won the crew over more than anything he said.

But even though they were now comfortable with him being on the ship, he still wasn’t trusted with any of the really important or interesting duties. John didn’t blame them - his main experience of ships was knocking around a well-appointed cabin while others got on with the real work. And the skills John did have - his fluency in French, Latin, Greek and German, his swordsmanship and riding ability, his particular brand of impassioned diplomacy, and his political connections - were worth next to nothing in the middle of the ocean.

Lafayette seemed perfectly content to while away the days in idle pursuits - he’d lounge in bed with a book he’d reread a dozen times, chat with the crew, or even sit on the forecastle deck and gaze out onto the sea ahead of them. He lived quietly in every moment, absorbing the world at a measured pace. 

Alex, on the other hand, guarded the most stimulating work jealously. With not much to do for days or weeks at a time, and with their library of books severely constrained by space, cost and weight, intellectual stimulation was hard to come by. And Alex’s brain needed constant feeding, so he spent most of the day deeply engaged in whatever tasks he could design - usually writing letters, planning their next stop at port, tallying their finances, or performing complex navigational calculations using bewildering nautical charts, a compass, and a device John discovered was called a sextant. Alex had learnt how to perform trigonometric calculations when he’d been an artillery captain, so he said the navigation was a nice way to keep sharp.

The first time John had bugged Alex about having something proper to do, Alex had given him a book to read called _Fighting and Sailing Instructions_ , which turned out to be a manual for British naval combat. Alex made him memorise all the flag signals and quizzed him relentlessly and at random times, including just after waking up and, on one memorable occasion, where Alex was mid-blowjob and refused to continue until John had correctly recited the flag colours and positions for ‘full fleet to attack together’.

After that, John tried to be a bit more careful, but boredom was a strong motivator. He’d offer to draft the occasional letter or make copies of the most important documents, hoping to slip his way into something more interesting. Eventually he started bugging Alex constantly to share some of his work, and Alex either sighed and relented - but then hovered over him anyway - or made up tasks to keep him busy that even John knew weren’t necessary.

But even these meagre scraps were better than the boredom.

And now John was starting to go a bit mad for lack of stimulation. They were still at least a week and a half out from their next call at port. The ship was in great shape, so there wasn’t much busywork to go around. Most of the crew was lounging above decks, playing cards or just relaxing. Lafayette was draped easily over the ship’s wheel, telling stories about his days in France to anyone in earshot. John spent a while with him, but even the sight of Lafayette’s sun-darkened shoulders and strong legs wasn’t enough to keep his mind from drifting. 

He wandered down below deck and to the little office where he knew Alex would be - head bent low over some parchment, one leg tucked up underneath him. He didn’t react to John’s arrival until John came in and placed his hands on his shoulders. Alex started a little, but then leaned into the touch and smiled up at John. 

“Hey, princess.”

John rolled his eyes. “Don’t start that again.”

“Hey, _I_ didn’t make you put on that petticoat,” Alex protested. 

“And I didn’t make _you_ tear it off.”

“Can you blame me?” Alex said, standing up from his chair and stepping into John’s arms. “That blond hair. That full pout,” and here he ran a thumb over John’s bottom lip, “That pretty flush on your cheeks when I tell you how sweet you are.” Alex laughed as John blushed, almost as if on command. “You are a delicious thing, John Laurens, and I refuse to let fabric stand in my way.”

John squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in Alex’s shoulder. “God, stop, you’re the worst.”

Alex shrugged and kissed his cheek. “Did you need something?”

“Um.” John sighed. “I could really use something to do. No more flags, though. And I’ve already alphabetised the books by author and title, so no more of that either please,” he added quickly. 

Alex tilted his head thoughtfully. There was a quirk to his lips that John hadn’t seen before. Alex looked surreptitiously towards the door. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Of course.”

“From Laf too?” Alex wasn’t meeting his eye. John felt a prickle of anxiety.

“Alex, what is it? Are you in some sort of trouble?”

Alex looked down. “Not exactly. It’s more… embarrassing, I guess. Promise you won’t tell?”

John nodded seriously. “I promise.”

Alex walked over to the door, glanced out, then closed it softly behind him. He gave John a searching look. “I need your help figuring something out.”

“Okay.”

Alex crossed back to his desk and opened a drawer, then popped out the false bottom and pulled out a yellowed parchment. He held onto it for a moment before hesitantly passing it to John. “Do you know what this is?”

John unfolded it and took a quick look. In the middle was a sketch of what looked like an island, with some points marked on it. Above and below the drawing were sequences of letters and numbers. John turned it over, but the reverse was blank. The paper felt old and fragile. 

“I’m guessing it’s a map of some sort?”

“Not just any map - a pirate map,” Alex explained in a conspiratorial whisper.

“A _treasure_ map?” John said, his eyes growing wide. He’d heard stories of pirates hiding vast treasures - gold coins, gems, weapons, bolts of cloth and other riches - and then recording the location on cryptic maps. John had thought they wouldn’t even look like proper maps to an untrained eye - certainly he would have come up with a less obvious design - but who was he to judge the ways of pirate folk?

“Yeah! And it must be a pretty big treasure if someone went to the trouble of mapping it and encrypting the location.”

“Okay… So, where is it?”

“That’s the thing,” Alex said. “I’ve been trying to decipher it for months now. But it’s hopeless!” He threw his arms up in despair. “The writing gives the coordinates for the location of the island, and the map itself shows where the treasure is hidden. But if we can’t work out the coordinates we’ll never find the island in the first place. The ocean is, after all, vast.”

John looked down at the parchment again, studying it. “Where did you get this?”

Alex bit his lip. “I bought it off a contact from, uh, Barbados. Someone I trust, so I know it’s genuine. Thing is - it cost quite a bit, and I didn’t tell Lafayette. I was hoping the treasure would more than pay for itself, but I just haven’t been able to figure out what the writing says.”

“And you think I can?”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“Alex, you’re the smartest person I know. If you can’t decipher it, what makes you think I will be able to?”

Alex tilted his head at him and crossed his arms. “You’re plenty smart too, John. Besides, maybe you know things I don’t, considering you’ve had all that fancy European education.” 

John looked down at it again for a moment. “Okay. I’ll take a look.”

“Just remember, Laf can’t know about it. Don’t let him see what you’re doing.”

“Got it.”

Alex smiled up at him. “Thank you. I have a good feeling about this.”

***

John spent the next five days holed away in the little room that had once been his jail cell. Alex gave him a quill, an inkwell and a few precious sheets of paper, and John snuck a few books out of their library that he thought might help. 

The first two days were an exercise in pure frustration. John tried every code and cypher he’d ever heard of - granted, it wasn’t a very long list - and even tested the approaches from right to left and bottom to top. Every attempt ended in gibberish. 

Then he decided to focus on finding patterns. The numbers and letters were mixed together, so he started by separating them out, then tried all sorts of combinations of the columns and rows. Nothing. He threw his quill down in frustration.

On day three, John decided he would not be beaten by some stupid pirates. He woke up early, at some ungodly time before dawn, and holed himself away for so long that even Alex got a bit concerned and suggested he come have a break and get something to eat out.

On day four, John decided he needed to start from scratch. He sat and glared at the map, trying to intimidate it silently into submission. He held it up to the candle to see if there was invisible writing on it. He studied it upside down, folded up, reversed.

On day five, John was close to tears. He stalked the lower deck, muttering to himself, tapping his fingers on all the surfaces, kicking his heels against the barrels of provisions. Alex eventually came out of his office and told him to keep it down. But something Alex said when he was scolding him made John's mind click, and he dashed back to his sanctum. And - _there_! Now that he saw what he was looking for, the solution flowed seamlessly, even if it did take him well into the night to finish untangling all of it.

***

The next morning, John waited impatiently for Lafayette to get out of bed and to head up onto deck before he slipped out of bed and crept over to where Alex was already working diligently. 

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Alex smiled but didn’t look up. 

“So, I think I’ve found something. On the, you know,” he looked around carefully, then whispered, “The map.”

Alex set his quill down and turned to face him. “Oh?”

“This sequence of numbers here looks an awful lot like the latitude and longitude coordinates I’ve seen you using on the sea maps.”

“Nautical charts,” Alex corrected reflexively. “Show me?”

John produced the slip of paper that he had noted his solution on. Alex took a careful look, then took out a chart and made some complicated-looking measurements as he plotted the location. His eyes widened. 

“You know what? This could actually be something. There’s a little archipelago around here and - this is crazy - it’s basically on our current heading into port anyway.” Alex turned back to John, and he was beaming. “What say we convince Laf to take a slight detour?”

***

John had no idea how Alex talked Lafayette into the excursion, but true to his word, two days later they sailed up to a beautiful scattering of pristine islands, each one circled in white sand and crowned with trees and shrubs, loud with birds.

They lowered their little rowboat and the three of them crossed to the island Alex pointed out. John and Lafayette rowed while Alex ‘navigated’, though considering they were going in a straight line in broad daylight, John suspected Alex just wanted an excuse not to have to do any manual labour.

They pulled the boat up on the beach and hiked inland, though it was not much of a trek considering John could see the other coast as soon as they had crested the ridge. Alex led them on a meandering course through the greenery, John following eagerly and Lafayette mostly just looking puzzled.

“This is the spot,” Alex said, consulting the map and pointing to a patch of sand.

John rushed forward, dropped to his knees in the sand and scrabbled beneath it. A few inches down, he hit a solid layer of black rock. This couldn’t be right… He tried a patch a few feet to the side and found the same. The third spot he dug was no different.

“There’s-- there’s nothing here!” John groaned, hitting the sand ineffectually with his fist. “Did we get the coordinates wrong or-”

His words died on his lips when he looked up and saw that Alex was beaming, his smile so wide it was threatening to sprain his jaw. Alex thrust his arms out towards him as though revealing something. John looked at him in bewilderment 

Lafayette was leaning against a palm tree, arms crossed, observing the scene with amusement.

“It’s you!” Alex said, thrusting his arms out for a second time. “Don’t you get it?” he continued, an edge of uncertainty creeping into his voice as John continued to scowl in confusion. “ _You’re_ the treasure, John!”

John groaned and flopped backwards into the sand, covering his face with his hands. All of this time, this effort, _days_ locked away… all for some stupid joke? 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

Alex was still standing there with his arms out, now glancing between John and Lafayette frantically. “Laf, you get it, right?”

Lafayette pushed off from the tree. “You have outdone yourself, mon chou.”

The self-satisfied grin returned to Alex’s face as Lafayette wrapped an arm around his waist. John propped himself up on his elbows and glowered.

“So, what, this whole thing was one big ruse?” 

Alex shrugged, still grinning and looking smug.

“And the map? The weird writing? The contact from Barbados…?”

“Some of my best work, really.”

“So this was all a pointless waste of time?”

“No, John,” Alex retorted. “If I say so myself, my plan turned out perfectly.”

“Explain,” John demanded, then realised his hair was now full of sand and started shaking it out with a long-suffering sigh.

“One,” Alex started, ticking off on his fingers, “I find this all _very_ amusing, and you can bet the crew will too, so I’ve done my job as first mate in keeping up morale. Two,” he continued, drowning out John’s grumbled retort and pointing at him accusingly, “It kept _you_ out of my hair for almost a whole week, though towards the end there I was worried you wouldn’t crack my pretty simple cypher in time. Remind me that we need to buy some new books when we make port. And you _really_ need to pick up a hobby, John.”

John cringed but couldn’t really argue; he knew he had been pestering Alex a lot recently, and this _had_ been an effective diversion. 

“Three, this is my revenge for the petticoat prank.”

“Revenge?” Lafayette said, pretending to sound affronted. “If I recall, you enjoyed that one very much.”

“The end of it, yes. But there was a whole lot of... discomfort before then. And four,” he said sweetly, reaching up to kiss Lafayette on the cheek, “Happy pirate anniversary, dear heart.”

“Eh? Is that today?” Lafayette asked.

“Indeed it is. Our first step towards a better life; our first day in charge of our own destinies. I’m so glad to be on this path with you. Both of you,” Alex added, turning to John.

John’s anger melted away at that. He cocked his head and smiled, though that just sent a fresh shower of sand down his shirt.

Lafayette grabbed Alex’s hand and led him over to where John was sitting. He looked at them fondly. “My treasures,” he said. “More precious than all the gold in the world.”

“Ugh, don’t be a sap,” Alex said, rolling his eyes, even though he was blushing. “Besides,” he added, looking meaningfully down at John, then back at Lafayette, “I think it’s time you unwrapped your present.”


End file.
